Just a quick post to share some examples of the recent early buzz that is generating around Aliette de Bodard‘s highly-anticipated new novel, THE HOUSE OF SHATTERED WINGS. The book, first in a two-book sequence, is due to be published in August/September by Gollancz (UK) and Roc Books (US).

The novel has received a starred review from Publishers Weekly…

‘A gripping tragedy of forlorn individuals caught up in an angelic version of the Cold War… The story holds up well as a standalone, with clear possibilities but no pressing need for a sequel. De Bodard aptly mixes moral conflicts and the desperate need to survive in a fantastical spy thriller that reads like a hybrid of le Carré and Milton, all tinged with the melancholy of golden ages lost.’

Speaking of Publishers Weekly, HOUSE OF SHATTERED WINGS was also selected as one of the magazine’s Top 10 Autumn SF/Fantasy/Horror picks:

The US cover also featured prominently at Penguin’s stand at San Diego ComicCon…

Here’s the synopsis…

A superb murder mystery, on an epic scale, set against the fall out – literally – of a war in heaven

Paris in the aftermath of the Great Magicians War. Its streets are lined with haunted ruins, Notre-Dame is a burnt-out shell, and the Seine runs black, thick with ashes and rubble. Yet life continues among the wreckage. The citizens retain their irrepressible appetite for novelty and distraction, and The Great Houses still vie for dominion over France’s once grand capital.

House Silverspires, previously the leader of those power games, now lies in disarray. Its magic is ailing; its founder, Morningstar, has been missing for decades; and now something from the shadows stalks its people inside their very own walls.

Within the House, three very different people must come together: a naive but powerful Fallen, an alchemist with a self-destructive addiction, and a resentful young man wielding spells from the Far East. They may be Silverspires’ salvation; or the architects of its last, irreversible fall…